Josh Trank Talks ‘Capone,’ ‘Fantastic Four’ Failures & Tom Hardy Saving His Life [Deep Focus Podcast]

You may have heard a little bit about the troubles of filmmaker Josh Trank in the last few years. And or, you may have seen his near-career-ending controversy and self-destruction relitigated in that amazingly in-depth, recent Polygon profile, documented over the last four years, telling the tale of the disastrous making of 20th Century Fox’s “Fantastic Four” (2015) and its painful aftermath which nearly turned him into a film industry pariah.

READ MORE: ‘Capone’: Tom Hardy Goes For Broke In Josh Trank’s Surreal Fever Dream Drama[Review]

Trank’s career has only spanned three feature films, but it already has a rise and fall three-act structure. Act 1: An auspicious beginning with his lo-fi found-footage super-powered teenagers movie, 2012’s “Chronicle.” Act 2: the infamous, near-career-killer that was “Fantastic Four” and all the media drama that surrounded it—”massive creative difference between me and a studio,” as he puts it now. And eventually, five years later, after the noise has subsided, a reemergence and comeback with “Capone,” (formerly titled “Fonzo,” and Trank still refers to it as such), a surreal winter-years fever-dream drama about the last days of notorious gangster Al Capone.

READ MORE: Josh Trank Says ‘Fantastic Four’ Drama Caused ‘Boba Fett’ Departure: “I Knew I Was Going To Be Fired If I Didn’t Quit”

Starring Tom Hardy as the titular Fonzo in a mushed-mouth, go-for-broke performance, “Capone” is really anything other than a gangster movie and more of a nightmarish relitigation of the mobsters own sins and transgressions. It was almost Trank’s form of therapy and survival. A return and a revival on his terms; sometimes grotesque, eschewing convention and structure, darkly comedic and pointedly uncomfortable. For better or worse, almost by his own admission, “Capone” is uncompromisingly strange, bizarre, and the exact kind of movie Trank wanted to make. Which is about as far as you can get as “Fantastic Four,” a movie that was mostly ripped away from Trank, mutilated beyond recognition, and a harrowing experience for the filmmaker.

READ MORE: Josh Trank Explains Why He Quit ‘Venom’ & The Things He Did To Ensure ‘Chronicle 2’ Wasn’t Made

The dark times were rough and disorienting in the fallout of media stories alleging dysfunctional and bad behavior on that movie’s set. “I’m reading these stories [about myself], just like everyone else, and my reaction to them was very surreal,” Trank said in our candid conversation about that period. “Because it was placing a person who had my name, in situations that I remembered completely differently.”

READ MORE: Josh Trank Talks ‘Boba Fett’ Film & The Creative Challenge Of Telling Stories In A Cinematic “Sandbox”

By his own admission, anger, bitterness, and defensiveness eventually led to confusion and a distorted sense of self. “I suddenly felt like my sense of identity didn’t belong to me anymore,” he admitted. While “Fantastic Four” was falling apart in the press before the movie came out, Trank said, “I was too scared to try and raise my voice at any moment [and] I was too stubborn to want to admit that I had lost control of something.”

READ MORE: ‘Capone’ Trailer: Tom Hardy & His Cigar Might Be Hiding Money In Josh Trank’s New Film

Despite all the emotional and psychological pain, the traumatic experience brought him, including career setbacks like losing a chance to make a “Star Wars” movie, Trank would essentially never have it any other way. “We all have our ‘Fantastic Four,’ he said of facing some failure or cataclysmic event in our life. “Everybody’s ‘Fantastic Four’ is their own, whatever gig it was, that just went as badly as possible. But we all aspire to just pick ourselves back up and hope to have a great experience on the next one.”

READ MORE: Director Josh Trank Reviews His Own Flop ‘Fantastic Four’ On Letterboxd & Talks Behind The Scene Drama

The filmmaker says “Capone” started bubbling in his mind in the aftermath of “Fantastic Four.” “My phone was not ringing anymore; I was [considered] a ‘toxic person,’ and nobody wanted to talk to me.” Perversely, this moment seems to have permitted him to explore the ambitious ideas of paranoia, delusion, and loss of self, seen swirling around in his wild, dreamlike movie.

READ MORE: Josh Trank Says He “Banned” Max Landis From ‘Chronicle’ Set As Fallout From Recent Sexual Assault Allegations Ramp Up

Trank credits Hardy with giving him the confidence to look past his failures and not carry the baggage around. “He hadn’t seen ‘Fantastic Four,’ nor did he care about any of that shit. Tom didn’t care. And when Tom didn’t care, I didn’t care either, suddenly, and Tom really saved my life in that sense or at least saved my self-esteem. I really owe him for all that.” The filmmaker says he and Hardy are working on several projects together, so who knows, maybe there’s another “Capone” collabo due in the future again too.

READ MORE: Josh Trank Is Finally Having Fun With ‘Fantastic Four’s’ Awfulness & It’s Great

I found Trank to be remarkably candid about his problems, affable and easy to talk to with the right attitude about it all—perhaps the opposite of what you’d expect if you had just read the Polygon piece, but to be fair, that was a different era and mindset. The darkness that enshrouded him then seems to have lifted, and his spirits are definitely on the upswing.

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